What about AMD's R9 Series (280x, 290x) on our Hackintoshes?. Further explanation.

[inaki.mat]

Now that Mavericks has been released I would like to talk about the possible compatibility of some AMD GPUs on a Hackintosh besides the FirePros that go with the new Mac Pro.


This GPUs are the R9 xxx Series for example the R9 280x and the 29 290X and in fact share many similarities with Mac Pro’s FirePro GPUs. I think this is very interesting since AMD R9 graphics cards retail at half price of Nvidias cards. This way it would be affordable to make a CrossFire configuration with these cards and double the performance of for example the GTX 780 getting to the level of the graphic power of a Mac Pro


I found a post where somebody finds similarity between R9 lineup (the R9 270x and the FirePro W7000 with the D300 from Mac Pro’s FirePro unreleased GPUs
http://www.overclock.net/t/1436253/...md-firepro-d500-dual-amd-firepro-d700-options


I extract the next paragraph from an article on extremetech.com that also points out some similarities between the same D300 Mac Pro’s FirePro graphics cards and other that are already released by AMD (http://www.extremetech.com/computing/169239-apples-new-mac-pro-december-3000)

First, if you’ve never heard of a Fire Pro D300, don’t feel bad — that card doesn’t show up anywhere on AMD’s spec sheets. With the company currently rebranding its Radeon hardware, it’s clear that a Fire Pro rollout is imminent as well. The new D300 is most likely a W5000 card — that’s a lower-end workstation GPU with 768 stream processors built on a 256-bit bus, with 2GB of RAM. Apple is claiming 2.7TFLOP of performance, which would match the combined output of a pair of W5000s, making them even more likely.​

We know that as not certain as all these may seem, (since both see similarities with different models but they are not 100% sure) both AMD and Nvidia reuse the same component across more than a single card. Now that said, do you guys think R9 GPUs could be compatible with Mavericks? since they share some features with the new Mac Pro’s GPUs


I would like to know more about this matter and know your opinion. To me this would be the real deal for my Hackintosh and if this is so I am sure many of you would be interested too. Lets hope AMD releases this new GPUs that have only be seen on the Mac Pro sooner or later if all of the above isn’t enough for a Mavericks compatibility on our Hackitoshes.

 

[Duchovny13]

I'm looking to get a R9 270x and i really appreciate if anyone would give it a try if you can and report back i was about to buy a GTX660 i already in the shopping cart when i decided to wait and see about the R9.

 

[inaki.mat]

I quote Bioteq from the following thread I have found here on tonymacx86 where they a making a list of AMD 7xxx series compatibility with OSX. Its so good that that from what I can read from this post that at least the R9 280x is working out of the box. I am not an expert on this but I guess the same would be applied to the 270x you are interested in and the 290x
http://www.tonymacx86.com/graphics/92952-list-confirmed-radeon-hd-7xxx-series-10-8-3-a-19.html

I'm positively surprised.

My R9 280x works Out of Box, no kext editing, no nothing.
Everything works from boot onward, integrated GPU is now entirely off.
The only setting I kept from my original HD4600 setup was the forced initial resolution of 1080p (not even sure whether this is necessary, but it sure doesn't hurt).

Card: Asus R9280X-DC2T-3GD5
System: 10.9

Correction: everything works, including HDMI audio, my settings in the display were all funky ​

 

[Duchovny13]

Great man thanks a lot for posting that

So i made my order for the R9 270X and i will post back the results, i should get it tomorrow so I'm installing Mavericks tonight and keep you posted

 

[inaki.mat]

Perfect, would be great to confirm everything goes smoothly. I presume given the price of AMD cards and Apple's embracement of the brand, we are soon going to see more R9 purchases/movement than we had imagined before. Including mine of course

 

[Duchovny13]

Yeah the 270x is so much superior then the GTX660, plus i want to connect my imac 27 to use triple screen with the hackintosh and the performance with 27inch was improved a lot Just hope Tonymac will "support/recommend" AMD cards as well, i think they might be sponsored in a way so I'm not sure if they will

 

[cwestpha]

Personally I am eyeing a 290x since it was just announced and is a complete beast (goes toe to toe to the titan) at a (more) reasonable price point... just need to wait till the custom heatsink and dissipation versions come out to knock a few dba off.
everything 280x and below is just rehashes of the 7xxx series with better binning from an extra year of experience producing the silicon. 290x is new silicon (Hawaii is the silicon's name) and thus will require new drivers, a new frame buffer, and more written for it in an update. Right now there is a WIP (Netkas wrote about it starting in late September) of it in the shipping Mavericks GM drivers but I personally wouldn't get a $500+ gpu just to test if OpenGL and OpenCL works yet. ^.~

according to Netkas (and from what I can see in my install) there are three versions based on the Hawaii silicon right now:
Radeon HD Hawaii XT Prototype
Radeon HD Hawaii PRO Prototype
Radeon HD Hawaii Unknown Prototype

the GPUs announced by Apple that AMD is making for the new Mac Pro doesn't seem to be listed or announced by AMD yet. It would make sense with the talk of real time 4K video editing being possible that all of these FirePros are based on the Hawaii silicon since they would be the first to natively and fully support 4k multi-monitor setups from AMD (right now you can drive perhaps one per GPU and in profesional video editing you have two if not three monitors at your target rendering resolution minimum). Honestly 4K is a bit of a mess right now since almost no panels are 24-bit accurate full 60hz single controller displays.
Nvidia and AMD seem to just be blanket supporting most implementations of chipsets once Apple adopts one of them into their products. This is good news for us since Apple is essentially contracting 90% of the work in getting our wide selection of PC graphics cards anyways and at most all we miss is the extra 10% (i.e. hardware ID match issues, not testing specific implementation against framebuffer, etc).

 

[kaefer]

So,
has anyone tested the R9 270X in 10.8.5 (or even better on mavericks)?

Or should I just stick with the (originally planned) 7870 and don't risk anything?

 

[OmegaNull]

I would love to know if the R9 290x will work with Mavericks. I have yet to see anyone with a thread. I am half tempted to buy one and test it my self.

 

[MagisDing]

According to the review of Anandtech, the 290X has been proved as a price/performance monster, I am really looking forward to some good news here, since it seems quite optimistic to lead a new buying trend.